Mailing List

Birmingham.pm have been in existance since September 2000. We were initially a small group of friends and colleages, who got together to discuss ... well just about anything. In announcing ourselves to the great wide world, we also set up a mailing list. This is how to use that list.

As of September 2003, the mailing list has been upgraded to Mailman. This is a mailing list manager that is favoured by many, due to its ease of administration.

Subscribing (Via Email):

Replace [password] with your own choice of password. If you omit the password, one will
be generated for you. Next choose between either: 'nodigest' or 'digest' (no quotes!).
If you leave this blank, 'digest' is chosen as the default. Lastly if you wish to subscribe
to an address other than the address you send your request from, you may specify
'address=<address>' (no brackets around the email address, and no quotes!)

Unsubscribing (Via Email):

Replace [password] with your own password. If you omit the password, a confirmation
email will be sent to your recognised email address before you are unsubscribed. If you
wish to unsubscribe an address other than the address you sent this request from, you may
specify 'address=<address>' (no brackets around the email address, and no quotes!)

Help (Via Email):

Send an email to birmingham-pm-request@mail.pm.org?subject=help
with the single word 'help' (no quotes!) in the subject or body of the email. This will
return a useful list of commands you can do with your account on the mailing list.

Posting:

Send an email to birmingham-pm@mail.pm.org
with insightful musing, entertaining witicisms and the occasional bit of Perl if you
really feel you must ;)

Netiquette

Styles:

There is currently no hard and fast rule about posting styles. However it is preferred
that inline-posting as opposed to top-posting is used. If you have to use top-posting,
please trim your messages to the relavent parts you are quoting. Posting styles can cause
heated debates, so please take care.

Off Topic [OT]:

There is nothing that has so far been attributed Off Topic, but if you feel that you
are posting something that might not considered exactly On Topic, precede the subject
with [OT].

Jobs [JOB]:

If posting jobs information, please precede the subject with [JOB]. Note that we don't
accept job postings directly from agents, due the dubious nature of some agents. However,
if your company has a Perl or related position that our members may be interested in,
please feel free to advertise.

If you are an agent, you may post to the list
administrator asking for a job specification to be posted to the list on your behalf.
If any agent chooses to ignore this request and posts directly to the list, please note
you run the risk of your companies domain being blacklisted as a spam domain and your
company getting an extremely bad reputation with the very people you hope to recruit.

Announcements [ANNOUNCE]:

If making any event announcements, please precede the subject with [ANNOUNCE].

Spam:

Spam is NOT tolerated on this list at all. Any email address that subscribes and sends
spam, will be unsubscribed and banned from rejoining the list. If you feel you have been
unjustly unsubscribed, please email the list
administrator and explain your situation.

Abuse:

Flame, Abusive or Derogatory Emails are not acceptable. Anyone posting with the intent
to offend, will be warned of their behaviour. Further instances will result in the poster
being unsubscribed and their email address being banned from rejoining the list.

Archiving:

No official public archive is held of list posts (except the first few when we set up
the list), due to previous attempts at defamations of character exterted on our members
by a misguided company executive. Although it is perfectly acceptable to store your own
private archive, we would prefer this not be made public.

Footnotes:
[1] <rant>Seeing as there is only one option for English in the admin pages, why does
Python promote such xenophobia?</rant>

About Birmingham.pm

We are one of the UK's largest Perl user groups, representing Birmingham UK to the international
Perl community since 2000. We hold monthly social and technical presentations, and several of our
members are now regular attendees and speakers at the YAPC::Europe Perl Conferences.